File:The popular natural history (1884) (20611088538).jpg

Title: The popular natural history
Identifier: cu31924090296397 (find matches)
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Wood, J. G. (John George), 1827-1889
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: New York, Burt Co
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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SAW-FISH.â(Prisiis antiquomm.) It has a very wide range of locality, being found in almost all the warmer seas, and even in the cold regions near the pole. The snout of this fish is greatly prolonged, and flattened like a sword- blade. On either edge it bears a row of tooth-like projections, firmly imbeddt d in the bone, few, short, and wide apart at the base of the beak, but becoming larger and set closer together towards the point. The form of the sockets into which the teeth are received, and their rather en- larged termination, are conspicuously indicated on the surface of the saw-blade. The tip of the saw is covered with hard granular scales. The number of teeth is not the same in every individual ; in a speci- men in my possession there are twenty-eight on each side of the saw. It is said that, like the sword-fish, this creature will attack the whale, thrusting its armed beak into the soft blubber-covered body of the huge cetacean, and avoiding, by its superior agility, the strokes of the tortured animal's tail, any blow of which, if it succeeded in its aim, would crush the assailant to death. The Saw-fish does certainly use this weapon for the destruction of fish. Colonel Drayson has informed me that when lying becalmed off the Cape, he has more than once seen a Saw-fish come charging among a shoal of fishes, striking right and left with the serrated edges of the saw, and killing or disabling numbers of the fish by this process. In all the Saw-fishes the skin is covered with minute rounded or hexagonal scales, arranged like the stones of a mosaic. The temporal orifices are very _ large, and are set some â ^ %y -<?j'~^ distance behindtheeyes. ~ The mouth is on the under surface of the head, and is furnished with a crushing appara- tus, made exactly on the principle of the stone- crushing machines of the present day. In the true Rays, or Raidffi, the fore-part of the body is flattened and formed into a disc- Wj-^^y\J like shape, by the con- ' (j) junction of the breast- fins with the snout. Our first example of the Rays is the Tor- pedo, a fish long cele- brated for its power of emitting at will electrical shocks of considerable intensity. In conse- quence of this property, it is sometimes called the Cramp-fish, Cramp Ray, Electric Ray, or Numb-fish,
Text Appearing After Image:
EYED TORPEDO.â(Torpedo oculata.)

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